Tag: stupid

Against Checks

The Fed could kill checks but isn’t. the 19th century checks business is not just embarrassing but hugely inefficient and harmful for the economy.

IFT — the ability for me to pay you, and for you to receive the funds within minutes, rather than having to wait until the following business day — is already a fact of life in many countries around the world, from India to the UK. Where it doesn’t already exist, you can be pretty sure that someone is working hard on a plan to make it happen. Except in the US, where no one seems to have even started the process yet.

checks, just like smallpox, can be eradicated. the obvious way is to slap a surcharge on them to reflect the true cost.

Unscientific US

Mooney describes in detail how bad it is – that millions of our neighbors deem facts to be malleably ignorable. Though soundly refuted by scientific studies, angry parents continue to believe their children acquired autism through vaccinations: “Where do they get their ‘science’ from? From the Internet, celebrities, other frantic-angry parents, and a few non-mainstream researchers and doctors who continue to challenge the scientific consensus, all of which forms a self-reinforcing echo chamber of misinformation,” writes Mooney, noting that for every 5 hours of cable news, just 1 minute is devoted to science. In 2009, 15 year old US students ranked 17th out of 34 developed countries in science. A firm foundation in science is fundamental to modern citizenship as well as our ability to innovate and succeed in a global economy.

scientific illiteracy is a far bigger problem than the ups and downs of politics, or caring about which marginally different party is in power.

I don’t want kids

There is a script in my life that repeats itself over and over again: I tell someone, a friend, colleague, family member, that I don’t want to have kids and with rare exception, I hear the following, “Oh no, you have to have kids, you’d be a great father! You’re just saying that now, but you’ll change your mind.”

every childfree person gets the sort of proselytizing described in this article by countless assholes.